Phonetic Detail in the Perception of Ethnic Varieties of US English 291clustering says something very important about the relation the speech cues
have with society.
Yet this depiction also invites the question as to how a reaction occurs
in the ¿ rst place and whether listeners’ responses are socially variable at the
perceptual level. The relation between what a speaker says and listeners’ reac-
tions, beliefs and comments about the speaker (Figure 13.1d) should not be
seen as a transparent or uninteresting one. Nevertheless, our understanding
of the vector between speech acts and speech reactions is often confounded
by an interface rendered opaque by properties of the acoustics of a speech act
itself. If the acoustic characteristic-perception cue interface, lying between
the speech act and response to that action, is rule governed, then we need to
ask some customary questions: What are the guiding principles? Are these
principles transparent and automatic? Are these principles universal, or do
they allow for variation?
It should be acknowledged that there are internal constraints on the inter-
face beyond the acoustic characteristics of speech that arise from processes of
Figure 13.1 The Hoenigswald-Preston observation (adapted from Preston, 1997).